A smartphone displaying the Google Drive app against a maroon background.
Google Drive. Image: Pe3check/Depositphotos

How to become a total pro at using Google Drive

22 Feb 2019

Even if you use Google Drive and all of its contained apps regularly, there are probably a few features you have yet to discover.

Google Drive has, according to Google, about 1bn users. It stores trillions of files for people all around the world, including everything stored on the apps that operate within, such as Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides. Yet it’s likely that many of those users aren’t using this suite of services to its full potential.

Did you know, for example, that you can restore previous versions of any document, sheet or slide? In any document type, just click ‘file’, then click ‘version history’. From there, click ‘see version history’ and every version will appear in a tab on the right panel. You then can scroll through and click the timestamps to see earlier versions of your file.

Google Docs also allows you to convert PDFs and images to documents. If you right-click on the desired image or PDF and open it with Google Docs, the file will automatically be converted.

If you’re a little fatigued with the font selection in Docs, you can add more. Simply locate the fonts menu on the toolbar, click ‘more fonts’ and choose which ones you want to add from the hundreds of compatible font types available.

If you’re working with an international team, you may be happy to know that Google Docs has a translation function. Inside the document, locate the tools menu. Select ‘translate document’, choose the language and rename the document. We would advise users, however, to get forms professionally translated if these documents are being used for legal or business purposes. Still, it’s a useful feature that may help you in a pinch to roughly ascertain meaning.

Did you know that you can embed charts, tables and slides into your document from Google Drive apps? If you’re putting together a presentation, click ‘insert’, then ‘chart’ and then ‘from sheets’. Select the file and click import – it’s as simple as that.

In Sheets, you can leverage a number of different analysis tools to yield new insights from your data. Simply highlight the data field and click the ‘explore’ assistant at the bottom right corner and a list of data calculations will open.

For more excellent tips, check out the infographic below, brought to you by NetCredit.

infographic about Google Drive

Infographic: NetCredit

Google Drive. Image: Pe3check/Depositphotos

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Eva Short
By Eva Short

Eva Short was a journalist at Silicon Republic, specialising in the areas of tech, data privacy, business, cybersecurity, AI, automation and future of work, among others.

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